Triva

[jwh]

I've just been reading some daily programmes kindly posted by Mtn2Sea and noticed 3 trivia options during the day. A morning game with the librarian, Team Trivia in the afternoon and then Pub Trivia in the evening. I am a trivia fan when cruising and can hardly wait! What is the difference between the 3? Are the Pub Trivia and morning trivia with the librarian hosted team games? Are the questions suited to all nationalities or mostly geared to Americans? (if so, I shall recruit some Americans to our team). How many on a team? Are there prizes? Are there normally people who take it far too seriously as on most ships :) I think it can be just so much fun and a great way to meet new people! Look forward to hearing from those who know!

[CaveDiving]

Hi JWH,

 

Yes trivia can be a great mental exercise and way of getting to know new people.

 

We really enjoy trivia but three times a day seems a bit over the top to us. Often the morning trivia conflicts with some lecture or other activity in which we are interested. And it seems as though the evening trivia often conflicts with either our dinner or the show that evening. But we really try to be part of an interesting team and make the afternoon team trivia.

 

Yes, there are passengers on the ship that take the trivia games rather seriously. I have seen heated arguments, for example, when the answer to a question was the country of the Netherlands and some Dutch cruisers got really mad that the answer of “Holland” was accepted. Their statement was “Holland is a province of the Netherlands, not the name of the country.”

 

Another argument erupted over the question “What was the verdict in the Lizzie Borden axe murder case?" The questioner accepted the answer of “innocent” but two attorneys argued that that was not a legal verdict because the only two possible verdicts were “guilty or not guilty.” Another disagreement was that James Whitaker was not the first man to climb Mt. Everest, he was the first man to reach the summit of Mt. Everest.

 

The afternoon team trivia (typically 6 to a team) is usually run by the Cruise Director and an attempt is made to make the questions international. But I do think that more US than foreign questions seem to sneak in. However, it is important to know the names and fates of the wives of Henry Vlll.

 

There are extremely valueless prizes awarded, such as pins and key chains. On Grand Cruises, the prizes are Grand Dollars which are redeemable for almost valueless trinkets. As has been said, the real prize each day is the winning team’s bragging rights until the next day.

 

Trivia can be a whole bunch of fun. Join in.

 

Scott & Karen

[Krazy Kruizers]

6 people on a team -- can be less.

Oh yes -- some people take it very seriously.

On a couple of our repositioning cruises -- 20 and 21 days -- there was only one prize at the end -- the team with the highest number of points at the end won some money and a couple bottles of sparkling wine. This varies by ship. We have given up going to the trivia as a couple of people would spend too much time arguing about the correct answer.

The pub trivia was a little different -- one night it was a music trivia, another night all science, etc. One cruise we made it to this type as it was at 7:30. But our last couple of cruises it was at 6:30 when we were at dinner.

Never went to the Librarian's trivia.

[puppycanducruise]

There is also a trivia page available at the librarian's desk each morning. It is a list of questions for you to answer on your own and turn back in. The page with the most correct answers is posted in the library. On one cruise, we saw the winner getting his picture taken with his answer sheet, I guess he was proud and wanted to prove to his friends back home he won.

[Candiaccruiser]

If I recall correctly, the Librarian's Trivia is a sheet of questions -- about 20, I think -- which are available at a specific time In the library every morning. You pick up the sheet, fill in your answers at your leisure, then return the sheet with the time it was returned noted on it. At the end of the day, the person who got the most correct answers in the fastest time is declared the winner and their sheet is pinned on the wall for others to examine. As far as I know there are no prizes, just the satisfaction of knowing you were the best!

 

The daily sudoku puzzles can be picked up here too.

 

Hope this helps.

 

 

Sent using the Cruise Critic forums app

[jtl513]

Yes, there are passengers on the ship that take the trivia games rather seriously. I have seen heated arguments, for example, when the answer to a question was the country of the Netherlands and some Dutch cruisers got really mad that the answer of “Holland” was accepted. Their statement was “Holland is a province of the Netherlands, not the name of the country.”

Actually it's a region consisting of two provinces, North Holland and South Holland. Holland is to the Netherlands as New England is to the US.

 

The problem is that the host always makes a big deal about the answer sheet being the final answer, and then promptly goes off and accepts answers that are not on the sheet. If the sheet said Holland was acceptable, that would be the end of it. Same with "innocent", etc.

.

Edited December 20, 2013 by jtl513

[KirkNC]

Team trivia is great fun but it can be uber competitive. I have seen 25 teams compete before. Heck we went so far one cruise as to arrange our team via our roll call prior to boarding :eek:, it worked as we won 2 or 3 times out of 7.

 

My experience with pub trivia has been in the Piano Bar were questions are asked and you shout out the answer. Not familiar with the Librarian version.

Edited December 20, 2013 by KirkNC

[ldog]

I love team trivia and have met some good friends that way. However, I agree that three times a day (as on our recent Ryndam cruise) is a bit much. It is just a cheap way to entertain us. There was only one lecture.

 

It helps if your team is made up of a variety of nationalities.

[George C]

We love triva , play at least once a day, but dislike how Hal does it now they used to give prizes each game ( small stuff) now they give it at end of the week, another thing that Hal has cut back on. So you need more or less same team and same team name each day.

[Avery's Gram]

We played the pub trivia on our Hawaii/Tahiti trip .....the jd ran it in the crows nest at 6:15, I think. It consisted of 10 fairly standard trivia questions followed by 5 musical clues....we had to identify the name of the song and the singer/group. Our foursome did pretty well on the first part and disastrously on the second! One team won fairly consistently, knowing the correct names of '80's and '90's pop song we had never heard of. Finally he confessed to having spent a few years working as a bouncer at a club and being forced to listen to all those songs over and over.

 

We all had a great time, and at the end several of the winners shared their champagne winnings with us.

 

Barbara M. In NH

Edited December 20, 2013 by Avery's Gram
Misspelled DJ

[jaspersmycat]

Last March on The NA the cruise director said there were 3 rules to trivia:

 

1) The CD's answer is always right

 

2) The CD's answer is always right

 

3) It is ONLY A GAME folks.

 

This last line seemed to lessen the competitive (combative?) nature of some teams.

[KirkNC]

I love team trivia and have met some good friends that way. However, I agree that three times a day (as on our recent Ryndam cruise) is a bit much. It is just a cheap way to entertain us. There was only one lecture.

 

It helps if your team is made up of a variety of nationalities.

 

Yes it does, also different ages. When we have out teenage daughter with us she always will know one or two answers that us older folks don't know.

[KirkNC]

We love triva , play at least once a day, but dislike how Hal does it now they used to give prizes each game ( small stuff) now they give it at end of the week, another thing that Hal has cut back on. So you need more or less same team and same team name each day.

 

We have not seen that change, it has always been prizes each game. Lapel pins or other tricket like stuff. Once a cruise is stupid :mad:.

[jwh]

Thanks for all your replies. It's pretty much as I've experienced on other ships, but there I've just played team trivia once a day. My husband and I escort small groups of mainly solos, and its a great way to have everyone come together at least once during the day time if they want. The pub trivia at night , exercising our brains over a glass of wine, sounds a great idea for this too. We have such fun laughing at how competitive some people get when paying for a pen or some such souvenir trinket. We always break into groups and try to have another nationality in the team to 'war' against the others :) I love the term 'bragging rights' that a few of you have mentioned. That is absolutely, 100% correct and of course the main reason for attempting to win. If any of you Americans are on the Zaandam 8Jan sailing to South America and Antarctica and looking for a team to join... 'come on down'. Being smart is not a requirement, as we aren't either, but having a good sense of humour and not taking anything seriously, most definitely is.

Cheers,

Judith

[peaches from georgia]

We took our 2 oldest grandchildren, 21 and 20, to dinner and trivia at our golf club not long ago. We thought they would hate playing with the old geezers and would end up watching whatever football game was on the big screen tv. Turned out they loved it, were very competitive, and can't wait to do it again.

[Bescotti]

Are the questions suited to all nationalities or mostly geared to Americans? (if so, I shall recruit some Americans to our team). How many on a team? Are there prizes? Are there normally people who take it far too seriously as on most ships :) I think it can be just so much fun and a great way to meet new people! Look forward to hearing from those who know!

 

A lot depends on where you cruise. When I have joined cruises from the US I've found that a lot of questions were geared for the North American audience. This past August on a NA Mediterranean cruise with a large contingent of Aussies and British on board the trivia questions were more general. The afternoon trivia in the Crows Nest had pins as prizes and the pub trivia often had a bottle of champagne as the prize - which we were able to swap for a bottle of wine in the MDR at dinner.

[ithaca gal]

We just got off the Nieuw Amsterdam yesterday and had a blast playing trivia twice a day. We played the afternoon trivia in the Crow's Nest with one set of new friends and played the pub trivia in the evening with another set of new friends.

 

The questions were relatively similar at both venues. We felt that the questions were a good mix of kinda easy (so that everyone feels smart!) and kinda hard (to sort out a winning team). The cruise director had questions that served all nationalities -- literature, sports, geography, etc. and some that might lean toward Americans and Canadians (but not many of that type).

 

We played on other HAL ships in the past and received luggage tags, coffee "go cups", Rubik's cubes, playing cards, etc. However, they now seem to give out ONLY HAL pins AND a bottle of champagne. We are non-drinkers, so we wish they would go back to the little prizes. Unless you happen to be a pin collector, the pins get tossed (either in a drawer or the trashcan).

 

At any rate, we had a GREAT time playing and never, ever missed a session. By the way, it takes about 35 minutes -- in case you are working out your schedule!

[WisRiver]

When we were on the Noordam in 2012 for an East to West transatlantic, in addition to the pub trivia and team trivia, the food director had a food trivia contest in the the late afternoon. This another team event, but the scores were not cumulative. Earlier this year we were on the South America repositioning cruise to Boston and there was only the pub and team trivia plus the written librarian trivia.

[lizzies_mom]

Last two cruises we've done Team Trivia and Pub Trivia. Haven't had progressive trivia since PC repositioning cruise in '09. May depend on CD.

 

While most of the time it is just heated competition for HAL pins, our team won a round of drinks one evening at Pub Trivia when we managed a perfect score. Major problem with Pub Trivia is that we and another couple were often late getting to late seating because the team usually stayed to catch up on our day after the game was over.

[George C]

We have not seen that change, it has always been prizes each game. Lapel pins or other tricket like stuff. Once a cruise is stupid :mad:.

 

I agree , this might depend on cruise director, but thats what we had on Maasdam in April for 11 day cruise.

[CaveDiving]

Last March on The NA the cruise director said there were 3 rules to trivia:

 

1) The CD's answer is always right

 

2) The CD's answer is always right

 

3) It is ONLY A GAME folks.

 

This last line seemed to lessen the competitive (combative?) nature of some teams.

 

The difficulty with an attitude like this is the CD's answer may be wrong.

 

A much better attitude, and one adopted by the more mature (in attitude, not necessarily in age) CD's, is that the CD's answer will be used to score the game and the first one to be able to demonstrate one of the CD's answers was wrong, will receive a free drink courtesy of the CD. Also, the wrong answer will be announced at the next day's game.

 

The CD's list does not trump the truth.

 

Scott & Karen

[Taxguy77]

I feel more cheated than ever!!!

Our only HAL cruise was a transatlantic where trivia can get very interesting, but on HAL, they sent a young girl to run it without giving her any time to even read the questions. It was all on American History and my wife helped another lady and I give this grad of a US Hischool a history lesson; and my wife never went to school in the US or even in English!!

Sad commentary on our school system. :(